Replica bell and ross br v2-92 military beige

The United States Army Air Corps standardized paint colors to be used on military assets in 1939. The Joint Aircraft Committee’s Subcommittee on Standardization elected to implement the the ANA (Army Navy Aircraft) color standard. This color standard created ANA 616, otherwise known as “Desert Sand.” Much like Olive Drab, this color has come to define military equipment, and to the general public it’s instantly recognizable as something purely tactical, as well as functional.
So it’s no surprise that bell and ross br v2-92 military beige chose the color scheme for the dial of the new BR V2-92 sports watch. The company has made a name – and defined an identity – with large square-cased watches designed after cockpit instrumentation. But the V2-92 is nothing like those – instead it thoughtfully straddles a number of traditional watch categories. The V2-92 has the face of a field watch, the bezel of a dive watch, and the personality of something straight from Operation Desert Shield.

There’s a certain balance to this watch that’s hard to come by; the models typically associated with Bell & Ross don’t quite exemplify the same sort of utilitarian design that the V2-92 gets right. It’s a total military mash-up, with design elements borrowed from field watches and dive watches packaged in a thin case. The domed crystal adds some additional thickness, for a total of 12mm thickness overall, but thanks to the thin case and high domed crystal you still get a very wearable watch.
The late ’80s saw the arrival of the Desert Battle Dress Uniform as the US military presence in desert regions increased. It was nicknamed “cookie dough camouflage” for its hues of tan and brown. The V2-92 feels like it could have been issued right alongside this battle dress uniform, but could it stand up to the same rigors?
One hundred meters of water resistance puts it closer to field watch territory than in the dive watch camp, and the bi-directional bezel doesn’t offer the same sort of safety as a unidirectional bezel, but I don’t think this is the watch to take diving anyway. It’s a sort of do-it-all watch; a jack of all trades that sacrifices doing one thing really well in order to do a good job at the mix of situations an everyday watch is used for. I don’t think the target demographic will take any points off for the one-in-a-million chance that a bezel gets knocked off by a few clicks underwater. From a purely practical standpoint, a bi-directional bezel makes more sense anyway; when you have gloves on, you want to turn the bezel the least amount of distance possible. What this also means is that typical “bezel slop” isn’t present, instead you get an affirmative click in either direction. A display caseback may also contribute to the level of water resistance, but it frames the lightly finished BR-CAL.302 nicely.
While the enthusiast world might have trouble with date wheels, the Swiss industry as a whole just doesn’t seem to want to let them go. Naturally, there is a date wheel on this model, but it’s integrated so thoughtfully that it shouldn’t bother even the most cranky no-date purist (I’m one of them). The date wheel is color matched, and this isn’t a standard black or white-dialed watch, either. It’s a very specific hue of military beige, and the window is rather small. Again, this watch strikes an admirable balance between typically competing camps.
The V2-92 wears the same typography as other Bell & Ross watches, but it appears softer, and the domed crystal distorts and diffuses it in a way that tones down the boldness found of some of the better-known models in the line. The bracelet also features polished center links. It balances out the hardcore tool watch aesthetic, but it’s also something you would never find on a watch that was actually engineered for the military in the modern era, anyway. You will, however, find an elastic canvas strap made famous by the Marine Nationale, included with the V2-92. Originally, the legend goes, paratroopers fashioned straps for their issued watches from the stretchy parachute webbing. The Bell & Ross strap features color-matched desert tan-accented black paracord.
The “vintage-inspired” branding is perhaps manifested in the domed crystal, but this watch certainly channels an earlier era of Bell & Ross, an era when the nascent company released watches like the Type Démineur, a watch designed for bomb disposal units, or the Space 3, a chrono that just screams “shuttle era.” Bell & Ross watches were initially produced by tool watch maker Sinn; the V2-92 shares a lot of the same design language as the Sinn-era Bell & Ross models, and that’s a wonderful thing.

Collectors are now considering watches from the ’80s and ’90s as “vintage,” and the V2-92 is branded as a vintage-inspired timepiece. The design of the watch, much like that of the A-10 Warthog that shined during the Desert Shield conflict in 1990, works just as well in 2019.

Replica bell and ross br v2-92 aeronavale

The Aeronavale is the aviation branch of the French Navy. Breguet famously equipped the Aeronavale with the battle-ready Type-20 pilot chronographs, which have been, and still are, ceaselessly coveted, collected, and copied. However, with the new bell and ross br v2-92 aeronavale 41-millimeter, Bell & Ross has created a watch suited not to battle garb but to the French Navy’s beautiful gold and blue full dress uniforms.

The Aeronavale is not a “real” military watch. In fact, the French Navy had nothing to do with it. Rather, Bell & Ross simply dreamed it up. Bell & Ross can get pretty conceptual this way, with recent examples including their copper-dialed Bellytanker (designed for an imaginary vintage land-speed-record scenario) and their sporty Racing Bird (meant to accompany a computer-generated high-speed plane).
On the surface Bell & Ross’ concepts can seem lofty, but I’ve found that the concepts help bring these watches down-to-earth by eliminating the pretense that a mechanical watch is, today, a real tool. When you consider that a life-long American civilian like me regularly wears a watch that Bell & Ross dreamed up to complement the French Navy Air Division’s full dress uniform, the whole enterprise takes on an air of delightfully absurd costuming. But, somehow, overtly acknowledging that we’re all playing dress-up seems to temper the absurdity.

But why would I—or anyone for that matter—fall for a watch like the Aeronavale? Typically there’s some personal connection that sets the heart aflame, and I’m sure others who enjoy the Aeronavale will have their own story. For me, it goes back to childhood.
One summer when I was around 12, the US Navy’s sailing team borrowed my Dad’s sailboat for a tet-a-tet against a crew of scrappy yahoos from the Buffalo Yacht Club. Predictably, the Navy’s clean-cut sailors breezily command victory. Later that night the Navy Band played the most badass funk—all of them in full dress uniforms like some strange spin-off of The Village People; the horn section lock-stepping to “Ladies’ Night” by Kool & The Gang; the dangerously handsome lead singer flirting with everyone’s wives and daughters. Utterly gobsmacked, Navy-cool has enchanted ever since.
Funny, though, that I didn’t fall in love with the Aeronavale’s predecessor, the 42-millimeter BR123 in the same colorway that Bell & Ross released in 2016. That watch has a significantly larger dial, and I felt like a poseur sporting such a huge blue and gold billboard. Thankfully, Bell & Ross has been following the trend toward smaller watches, and this new 41-millimeter 92-V2 Aeronavale is one of the best fitting, most elegant, and properly proportioned watches I own. It delivers just enough Navy-cool.

All of the B&R 92-V2 watches run on the BR-CAL.302, an adaptation of the increasingly ubiquitous Sellita SW300-1, which itself is a near-clone of ETA’s 2892. The “-1” indicates that this movement has beefed-up teeth on the gear train, which Sellita claims reduces inaccuracies introduced by shock. Bell & Ross doesn’t disclose whether they’ve made any mechanical upgrades, and the only visible modification is the engraved logo and other subtle touches on the rotor. As with all SW330s, its a-magnetic Nivaflex hairspring oscillates 28,800 times an hour, it includes an Incabloc anti-shock system, and it can store up to 42 hours of power. The movement is visible through a sapphire crystal mounted in the handsome screwed-in case back.
Being vintage-inspired, the entire case is polished to perfection, its shape traditional and elegant, its connections seamless and sharp. This is high-quality metalwork, as impressive under a loupe as it is at arms length. Like all of Bell & Ross’s vintage-inspired pieces, the lugs are long and leave a sizable gap between the strap and the case, which affords a clear view of the excellent connection where the bezel, case, and lugs meet. This can be a contentious detail, but I adore it.
The crown threads in and out like it’s dipped in butter, and the robust crown guards—which match the case so well that they look like a third pair of lugs—are visually and ergonomically unobtrusive. The crown is signed with the iconic “&” that’s come to stand for Bell & Ross, and even the minute details of that signature exhibit flawless brushing and polishing.

The bezel has a polished coin-edge which slightly overhangs the case, thus providing ample grip and a classic look. The bezel clicks 120 times per rotation, and, because the Aeronavale is a flight-oriented watch, the bezel is bi-directional. Though it moves into position with perfect alignment, like most bi-directional bezels there is a bit of play when stationary. The blue anodized aluminum of the bezel insert matches the dial to a tee, and the gold 60-minute markers similarly match the gilt markers on the dial.
The curved, anti-reflective sapphire crystal is a thing of true beauty, almost indistinguishable from acrylic other than the deadened sound it produces when I drum on it with my fingernail (acrylic is more resonant than sapphire). The crystal’s curves produce creamy, dreamy visual distortions, and, although neither the edge of the dial nor the tip of the hands curve downward—as so many vintage dials and hands do—at certain viewing angles the crystal’s distortions create the illusion of curvature toward the polished steel rehaut. All told, the Aeronavale’s crystal is among the most convincing sapphire imitations of acrylic I’ve seen.

I know I’m supposed to join the chorus lamenting the ills of date apertures placed at 4:30, but I’ve grown to love these discrete, circular date windows. And thank you, Bell & Ross, for not interrupting any of the Aeronavale’s gloriously legible gold numerals and markers with the date aperture (a big pet peeve of mine). On the Aeronavale, the date wheel is rendered in the same radiant blue as the dial, and the numerals are in white paint that matches the minute track, logo, and three lines of spec text on the dial.
The Aeronavale is rated to 100-meters of water resistance, so I will SCUBA dive in it, though I can’t recommend doing so to anyone else because watch brands claim that you need a better rating in order to dive deep. The WR rating has me questioning what qualifies as a Dressy Tool Watch, or DTW, a category that Ilya and I, in true Bell & Ross fashion, simply dreamed up. We disqualified rotating bezels as too “tooly,” but because the Aeronavale is dressy enough for full dress military uniforms—arguably the dressiest outfit a person can wear—I am tempted to make an exception and declare the Aeronavale a full-on DTW.
Attributes that make the Aeronavale so dressy include the fully polished case, the radially brushed blue dial, the vertically-brushed gilt numerals and markers, the dual-tone beveled hands, and the unique “ice-blue” calfskin strap. Tally that all up, and you’ve got quite a fancy presentation. The whole package looks like something you’d wear to meet a dignitary.

The dual-tone hands deserve a closer look, as they are brushed on one half and polished on the other. This treatment—which is found on a few watches including some of Mido’s offerings—creates the illusion of a much more deeply beveled hand while also shortening the stack of hands on the central arbor. The visual trick is quite convincing—so convincing that I missed it entirely until Ilya pointed it out. Bell & Ross has skeletonized those hands and filled them with Super-LumiNova, though, as with many of their watches, the small quantity of lume makes it seem like an afterthought. The upshot is that the Bell & Ross made no concessions to lume as they loaded the dial with those vertically brushed gilt numerals and markers. Lastly, the relative lack of lume reinforces the notion that the Aeronavale is more costume than tool.
If you’ve still got doubts about its dress watch status, check out the Aeronavale’s “ice blue” patent leather strap. It fades from deep dark blue at the edges to a muted mid-blue at the center, and the white stitching picks up the white paint on the dial and date disc. I adore this strap, though its something I’d never have leaned toward outside of this context. The signed deployant clasp is mirror-polished like the case, features snail engraving inside the buckle, and it is a cinch to open and close. Deployant clasps on leather are often a bit bulky on the backside of the wrist, and this one is no exception. That bulk doesn’t bother me, however, and it’ll be a personal choice between the steel bracelet (which I’ve only handled in a boutique for a moment), a standard pin-buckle on the leather strap (which is easy enough to convert), or a third-party strap that suits your fancy (which is half the fun).

replica bell and ross br v2

The BR V2-93 GMT replica watch exists in Bell & Ross’ “Vintage” collection where you can find other “BR V2” models that share this case and bracelet design. Currently, this is the only BR V2 model with a GMT complication – and the price premium for it above the collection’s three-hand models is modest at about $300. BR V2-93 GMT BLUE
Bell & Ross had to evolve. This was the mission of the “Vintage Collection”. Entirely redesigned in 2017, this year the brand adds a few vintage elements to make this collection even cooler, with the Steel Heritage. Today, we take a closer look at the BR V2-92 Steel Heritage. Bell and Ross BR V2-94 AÉRONAVALE BRONZE
The Bell & Ross BR V2-92 Military Beige: 41mm x 12mm, 100 meters water resistance, with domed sapphire crystal and sapphire caseback. Steel bezel with anodized black aluminum ring; bi-directional with 60 minute scale; screw-down crown. Movement, BR-CAL 302 (Sellita SW-300-1 base) 28,800 vph, 38 hour power reserve. Bell and Ross BR V2-92 MILITARY GREEN
The Bell & Ross Vintage BR V2-94 on the bonnet of a vintage Alfa Romeo GT1300 Junior circa 1973 which is prepared for racing. The car features roll bars in the cabin which is stripped of most creature comforts. On the dashboard of the Alfa Romeo GT1300 Junior. The vintage feel of the BR V2-94 blending in with the early 1970s feel of the car. Bell and Ross BR V2-93 GMT BLUE
Since it was founded, Bell & Ross has been passionate about military history and its functional and aesthetic archetypes. Flight instruments will always be a source of watchmaking inspiration for its designers. As such, military specifications provide Bell & Ross timepieces with rigorous and exacting standards in terms of legibility, functionality, precision and reliability. Modern-day codes also drive Bell & Ross to revisit historic pieces to create new models whose design and technology are in line with current trends.

It is in this spirit that, this year, Bell & Ross has unveiled three singular watches that evoke its three realms of expression: Sea, air and land. Both classic and modern, all three are driven by a reliable Swiss mechanical movement with automatic winding and are equipped with a “NATO Stretch” strap with a practical closure system, created using parachute straps. The practical strap makes for a very sharp, on-trend look and is in line with the neo-vintage trend which is popular with its fans.
Following on from the BR V2-93 GMT 24H launched in 2018, this year, Bell & Ross has completed its range of watches targeted at modern frequent travellers – both professional and civilian – in search of a chic and functional timepiece. The contemporary design of the BR V2-93 GMT Blue is perfectly suited to 21st century travelers.
Its 41-mm round steel case is characteristic of the Vintage series, with integrated protection for the screw-down crown. With a galvanic blue case-back featuring a sunray pattern, the dial is a nod to the world of air travel and long transatlantic trips, while the second hand counterweight is subtly styled in the shape of an aircraft. The bi-directional rotating bezel in two-tone anodized aluminium (grey for daytime and blue for night-time) means the time in a second time zone (shown on a 24-hour scale) can be read instantly thanks to the fourth hand, or the “GMT” hand, with its stand out red arrow.
For optimal legibility, the four faceted hands and the decal indices and numerals boast a photo-luminescent coating in white Super-LumiNova
Based on the principle that the essential should never give way to the superfluous, with this new BR V2-92 Military Green model, Bell & Ross engineers and watchmakers have designed a practical watch perfectly suited to all uses.

Paying tribute to the men on the ground who were the first to use the wristwatch as fundamental instruments for their missions, Bell & Ross has unveiled a sport-chic civilian version of its BR V2-92 which evokes nature and wide-open spaces. Staying faithful to the military technical specifications, the anti-reflective matte khaki dial is legible both day and night, the sapphire crystal is scratch-resistant and the Swiss mechanical movement with automatic winding is highly precise and has been tested for all types of missions.
To ensure optimal legibility, the BR V2-92 Military Green shares the same lineage as watches from the Bell & Ross “LUM” collection which are treated with green-coloured Super-LumiNova C3 to maximise their luminescent qualities. Playing on both the discreet nature of the khaki camouflage dial and its functional design, it is aimed at professionals and daily adventurers searching for a timepiece which is robust and timeless.
Faithful to lines from the Bell & Ross Vintage collection, its 41-mm round steel case with a crown guard is equipped with a glass dome, or “glass box”, and a black bi-directional rotating bezel in anodized aluminium to measure short periods.
In a nod to well-known Bell & Ross “Military Type” references, the BR V2-92 Military Green continues this connection both on a technical and stylistic level. The date is displayed in a round window at 4.30 – one of the brand’s signature features – the khaki disc inside being the same colour as the dial. Adventurous and urban, the BR V2-92 Military Green goes back to basics yet continues the great tradition of professional timepieces.
In a nod to the Vintage BR Aéronavale collection, this year Bell & Ross went a step further and unveiled a new BR V2-94 Aéronavale Bronze in a limited edition of 999 pieces that combines functionality and elegance while subtly reflecting the prestigious ceremonial uniform of French naval officers.
This elegant chronograph is clearly aimed at lovers of beautiful timekeeping instruments. In stabilised CuAl7Si2 bronze (91% copper, 7% aluminium and 2% silicon), its 41-mm case stands out with its distinctive yellow gold colour. Known for its changing nature that gives it its unique character, bronze – a material cherished by Bell & Ross – provides a whole palette of unique shades.

Similar to the other chronographs from the Vintage series, the BR V2-94 Aéronavale Bronze is equipped with a fixed bezel, here in navy blue anodised aluminium. Its ocean blue dial is decorated with gilt metal indices and numerals and baton-shaped skeletonised hands in white Super-LumiNova for optimal legibility.
The functional, ultra-curved “glass box” sapphire crystal reinforces both the classic style of the piece and its resistance. In this sense, the BR V2-94 Aéronavale Bronze meets all the criteria of the military technical specifications intended for such a timepiece. This refined chronograph featuring screw-down pushers will appeal to collectors looking for a model with a vintage feel which evokes the “bi-compax” chronographs from the 1960s which featured two sub-dials.